第 53 页

easier one to answer, Nell mentioned the name of the village in which

their friend the schoolmaster dwelt, as being less likely to be known

to the men or to provoke further inquiry.

'I thought somebody had been robbing and ill-using you, might be,' said

the man. 'That's all. Good day.'

Returning his salute and feeling greatly relieved by his departure,

Nell looked after him as he mounted one of the horses, and the boat

went on. It had not gone very far, when it stopped again, and she saw

the men beckoning to her.

'Did you call to me?' said Nell, running up to them.

'You may go with us if you like,' replied one of those in the boat.

'We're going to the same place.'

The child hesitated for a moment. Thinking, as she had thought with

great trepidation more than once before, that the men whom she had seen

with her grandfather might, perhaps, in their eagerness for the booty,

follow them, and regaining their influence over him, set hers at

nought; and that if they went with these men, all traces of them must

surely be lost at that spot; determined to accept the offer. The boat

came close to the bank again, and before she had had any more time for

consideration, she and her grandfather were on board, and gliding

smoothly down the canal.

The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes

shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country,

intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills, cultivated

land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with its modest

spire, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out from among the

trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with great church towers

looming through its smoke, and high factories or workshops rising above

the mass of houses, would come in view, and, by the length of time it

lingered in the distance, show them how slowly they travelled. Their

way lay, for the most part, through the low grounds, and open plains;

and except these distant places, and occasionally some men working in

the fields, or lounging on the bridges under which they passed, to see

them creep along, nothing encroached on their monotonous and secluded

track.

Nell was rather disheartened, when they stopped at a kind of wharf late

in the afternoon, to learn from one of the men that they would not

reach their place of destination until next day, and that, if she had

no provision with her, she had better buy it there. She had but a few

pence, having already bargained with them for some bread, but even of

these it was necessary to be very careful, as they were on their way to

an utterly strange place, with no resource whatever. A small loaf and

a morsel of cheese, therefore, were all she could afford, and with

these she took her place in the boat again, and, after half an hour's

delay during which the men were drinking at the public-house, proceeded

on the journey.

They brought some beer and spirits into the boat with them, and what

with drinking freely before, and again now, were soon in a fair way of

being quarrelsome and intoxicated. Avoiding the small cabin,

therefore, which was very dark and filthy, and to which they often

invited both her and her grandfather, Nell sat in the open air with the

old man by her side: listening to their boisterous hosts with a

palpitating heart, and almost wishing herself safe on shore again

though she should have to walk all night.

They were, in truth, very rugged, noisy fellows, and quite brutal among

themselves, though civil enough to their two passengers. Thus, when a

quarrel arose between the man who was steering and his friend in the

cabin, upon the question who had first suggested the propriety of

offering Nell some beer, and when the quarrel led to a scuffle in which

they beat each other fearfully, to her inexpressible terror, neither

visited his displeasure upon her, but each contented himself with

venting it on his adversary, on whom, in addition to blows, he bestowed

a variety of compliments, which, happily for the child, were conveyed

in terms, to her quite unintelligible. The difference was finally

adjusted, by the man who had come out of the cabin knocking the other

into it head first, and taking the helm into his own hands, without

evincing the least discomposure himself, or causing any in his friend,

who, being of a tolerably strong constitution and perfectly inured to

such trifles, went to sleep as he was, with his heels upwards, and in a

couple of minutes or so was snoring comfortably.

By this time it was night again, and though the child felt cold, being

but poorly clad, her anxious thoughts were far removed from her own

suffering or uneasiness, and busily engaged in endeavouring to devise

some scheme for their joint subsistence. The same spirit which had

supported her on the previous night, upheld and sustained her now. Her

grandfather lay sleeping safely at her side, and the crime to which his

madness urged him, was not committed. That was her comfort.

How every circumstance of her short, eventful life, came thronging into

her mind, as they travelled on! Slight incidents, never thought of or

remembered until now; faces, seen once and ever since forgotten; words

scarcely heeded at the time; scenes, of a year ago and those of

yesterday, mixing up and linking themselves together; familiar places

shaping themselves out in the darkness from things which, when

approached, were, of all others, the most remote and most unlike them;

sometimes, a strange confusion in her mind relative to the occasion of

her being there, and the place to which she was going, and the people

she was with; and imagination suggesting remarks and questions which

sounded so plainly in her ears, that she would start, and turn, and be

almost tempted to reply;--all the fancies and contradictions common in

watching and excitement and restless change of place, beset the child.

She happened, while she was thus engaged, to encounter the face of the

man on deck, in whom the sentimental stage of drunkenness had now

succeeded to the boisterous, and who, taking from his mouth a short

pipe, quilted over with string for its longer preservation, requested

that she would oblige him with a song.

'You've got a very pretty voice, a very soft eye, and a very strong

memory,' said this gentleman; 'the voice and eye I've got evidence for,

and the memory's an opinion of my own. And I'm never wrong. Let me

hear a song this minute.'

'I don't think I know one, sir,' returned Nell.

'You know forty-seven songs,' said the man, with a gravity which

admitted of no altercation on the subject. 'Forty-seven's your number.

Let me hear one of 'em--the best. Give me a song this minute.'

Not knowing what might be the consequences of irritating her friend,

and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little

ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so

agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory

manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so

obliging as to roar a chorus to no particular tune, and with no words

at all, but which amply made up in its amazing energy for its

deficiency in other respects. The noise of this vocal performance

awakened the other man, who, staggering upon deck and shaking his late

opponent by the hand, swore that singing was his pride and joy and

chief delight, and that he desired no better entertainment. With a

third call, more imperative than either of the two former, Nell felt

obliged to comply, and this time a chorus was maintained not only by

the two men together, but also by the third man on horseback, who being

by his position debarred from a nearer participation in the revels of

the night, roared when his companions roared, and rent the very air.

In this way, with little cessation, and singing the same songs again

and again, the tired and exhausted child kept them in good humour all

that night; and many a cottager, who was roused from his soundest sleep

by the discordant chorus as it floated away upon the wind, hid his head

beneath the bed-clothes and trembled at the sounds.

At length the morning dawned. It was no sooner light than it began to

rain heavily. As the child could not endure the intolerable vapours of

the cabin, they covered her, in return for her exertions, with some

pieces of sail-cloth and ends of tarpaulin, which sufficed to keep her

tolerably dry and to shelter her grandfather besides. As the day

advanced the rain increased. At noon it poured down more hopelessly

and heavily than ever without the faintest promise of abatement.

They had, for some time, been gradually approaching the place for which

they were bound. The water had become thicker and dirtier; other

barges, coming from it, passed them frequently; the paths of coal-ash

and huts of staring brick, marked the vicinity of some great

manufacturing town; while scattered streets and houses, and smoke from

distant furnaces, indicated that they were already in the outskirts.

Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of buildings, trembling with the

working of engines, and dimly resounding with their shrieks and

throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting forth a black vapour, which hung

in a dense ill-favoured cloud above the housetops and filled the air

with gloom; the clank of hammers beating upon iron, the roar of busy

streets and noisy crowds, gradually augmenting until all the various

sounds blended into one and none was distinguishable for itself,

announced the termination of their journey.

The boat floated into the wharf to which it belonged. The men were

occupied directly. The child and her grandfather, after waiting in

vain to thank them or ask them whither they should go, passed through a

dirty lane into a crowded street, and stood, amid its din and tumult,

and in the pouring rain, as strange, bewildered, and confused, as if

they had lived a thousand years before, and were raised from the dead

and placed there by a miracle.

CHAPTER 44

The throng of people hurried by, in two opposite streams, with no

symptom of cessation or exhaustion; intent upon their own affairs; and

undisturbed in their business speculations, by the roar of carts and

waggons laden with clashing wares, the slipping of horses' feet upon

the wet and greasy pavement, the rattling of the rain on windows and

umbrella-tops, the jostling of the more impatient passengers, and all

the noise and tumult of a crowded street in the high tide of its

occupation: while the two poor strangers, stunned and bewildered by the

hurry they beheld but had no part in, looked mournfully on; feeling,

amidst the crowd, a solitude which has no parallel but in the thirst of

the shipwrecked mariner, who, tost to and fro upon the billows of a

mighty ocean, his red eyes blinded by looking on the water which hems

him in on every side, has not one drop to cool his burning tongue.

They withdrew into a low archway for shelter from the rain, and watched

the faces of those who passed, to find in one among them a ray of

encouragement or hope. Some frowned, some smiled, some muttered to

themselves, some made slight gestures, as if anticipating the

conversation in which they would shortly be engaged, some wore the

cunning look of bargaining and plotting, some were anxious and eager,

some slow and dull; in some countenances, were written gain; in others,

loss. It was like being in the confidence of all these people to stand

quietly there, looking into their faces as they flitted past. In busy

places, where each man has an object of his own, and feels assured that

every other man has his, his character and purpose are written broadly

in his face. In the public walks and lounges of a town, people go to

see and to be seen, and there the same expression, with little variety,

is repeated a hundred times. The working-day faces come nearer to the

truth, and let it out more plainly.

Falling into that kind of abstraction which such a solitude awakens,

the child continued to gaze upon the passing crowd with a wondering

interest, amounting almost to a temporary forgetfulness of her own

condition. But cold, wet, hunger, want of rest, and lack of any place

in which to lay her aching head, soon brought her thoughts back to the

point whence they had strayed. No one passed who seemed to notice

them, or to whom she durst appeal. After some time, they left their

place of refuge from the weather, and mingled with the concourse.

Evening came on. They were still wandering up and down, with fewer

people about them, but with the same sense of solitude in their own

breasts, and the same indifference from all around. The lights in the

streets and shops made them feel yet more desolate, for with their

help, night and darkness seemed to come on faster. Shivering with the

cold and damp, ill in body, and sick to death at heart, the child

needed her utmost firmness and resolution even to creep along.

Why had they ever come to this noisy town, when there were peaceful

country places, in which, at least, they might have hungered and

thirsted, with less suffering than in its squalid strife! They were

but an atom, here, in a mountain heap of misery, the very sight of

which increased their hopelessness and suffering.

The child had not only to endure the accumulated hardships of their

destitute condition, but to bear the reproaches of her grandfather, who

began to murmur at having been led away from their late abode, and

demand that they should return to it. Being now penniless, and no

relief or prospect of relief appearing, they retraced their steps

through the deserted streets, and went back to the wharf, hoping to

find the boat in which they had come, and to be allowed to sleep on

board that night. But here again they were disappointed, for the gate

was closed, and some fierce dogs, barking at their approach, obliged

them to retreat.

'We must sleep in the open air to-night, dear,' said the child in a